Gordon wrote:

: Plenty of blame to go around - with the exceptio of Udet, most of the RLM
: strikes me as incompetent.

Udet wasn't particularly competent either. A fine pilot,
but a poor industrialist, who did not plan sufficiently
ahead and really could not cope with the stress of his
office.

: The Zwilling 335 never made it off paper - the NF 335 would have remained more
: traditional (if that can be said of any 335), with a humped spine for the
: bordfunker and a leading-edge radar array.

No humped spine, actually: That was the trainer model, of which
some were modified as part of the prototype programme. But the
real nightfighter version would have a straight spine, which
meant that the radar operator had little outside view, but
apparently that wasn't much of a requirement.

: German pilots were odd when it came to radar: while RAF nightfighter
: crews considered it an indespensible tool, most LW crews thought of
: it as an extra weapon, to enhance their primary night
: detection device, their eyes.

German nightfighter radars failed to come even close to the
performance of the British centimetric radar sets. The yagi
aerials would always have broad, overlapping transmit/receive
lobes, and target location was by comparing the signal
differences. IN contrast, centimetric radar beams could be
steered by parabolic reflector dishes; giving much better
resolution and low-altitude performance.

At the very end of the war, the Germans had copied sets which
had fallen into their hands in the 'Berlin' radar sets, which
was fitted to a handful of Ju 88G nightfighters. However, it
would hardly have been possible to fit this to the Do 335;
except perhaps in a large underwing pod. So the Ju 388 was
actually the better basis for a future nightfighter.

Emmanuel Gustin